1. SOFT TARGETS On April 12, 1982, Yuri Andropov, the chairman of the K.G.B., ordered foreign-intelligence operatives to carry out “active measures”—aktivniye meropriyatiya—against the reëlection campaign of President Ronald Reagan. Unlike classic espionage, which involves the collection of foreign secrets, active measures aim at influencing events—at undermining a rival power with forgeries, front groups, and countless other techniques honed during the Cold War. The Soviet leadership considered Reagan an implacable militarist. According to extensive notes made by Vasili Mitrokhin, a high-ranking K.G.B. officer and archivist who later defected to Great Britain, Soviet intelligence tried to infiltrate the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic National Committees, popularize the slogan “Reagan Means War!,” and discredit the President as a corrupt servant of the military-industrial complex. The effort had no evident effect. Reagan won forty-nine of fifty states.... http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-and-the-new-cold-war
Active measures were used by both sides throughout the Cold War. In the nineteen-sixties, Soviet intelligence officers spread a rumor that the U.S. government was involved in the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. In the eighties, they spread the rumor that American intelligence had “created” the aids virus, at Fort Detrick, Maryland. They regularly lent support to leftist parties and insurgencies. The C.I.A., for its part, worked to overthrow regimes in Iran, Cuba, Haiti, Brazil, Chile, and Panama. It used cash payments, propaganda, and sometimes violent measures to sway elections away from leftist parties in Italy, Guatemala, Indonesia, South Vietnam, and Nicaragua. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, in the early nineties, the C.I.A. asked Russia to abandon active measures to spread disinformation that could harm the U.S. Russia promised to do so. But when Sergey Tretyakov, the station chief for Russian intelligence in New York, defected, in 2000, he revealed that Moscow’s active measures had never subsided. “Nothing has changed,” he wrote, in 2008. “Russia is doing everything it can today to embarrass the U.S.” Vladimir Putin, who is quick to accuse the West of hypocrisy, frequently points to this history. He sees a straight line from the West’s support of the anti-Moscow “color revolutions,” in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine, which deposed corrupt, Soviet-era leaders, to its endorsement of the uprisings of the Arab Spring. Five years ago, he blamed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the anti-Kremlin protests in Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square. “She set the tone for some of our actors in the country and gave the signal,” Putin said. “They heard this and, with the support of the U.S. State Department, began active work.” (No evidence was provided for the accusation.) He considers nongovernmental agencies and civil-society groups like the National Endowment for Democracy, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the election-monitoring group Golos to be barely disguised instruments of regime change. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-and-the-new-cold-war
just brothers in arms really...both against the press and both hate Europe...both want to expand nukes and pump up the military...both like locker room talk and blondes with Balkan accents
I don't see why Russia wants to get into spending huge amounts of its economy on nukes that won't get used. That arms race is one they're easily going to lose, and lose badly.
I'm not sure I buy the "puppet" angle, but I do think they benefit by from the chaos, especially if the goal is to weaken the NATO alliance and break-up the EU. I suspect Putin's long game is to reunify the old Soviet empire. First Georgia, then Ukraine, then? . . . Who knows, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia?
What would Obama have done to stop Putin if he just took over all those places? There's another way to look at Putin's motives. When the USSR broke up, the West started inviting ex-Soviet bloc nations to join NATO and also installs missiles and other weapons and bases in those states. That's a huge threat to Russia's security.
Obama didn't do anything but impose sanctions. I'm not sure what your angle is? I thought Obmama was most a limp dick, in over his head when it came to foreign policy, even if I thought he was a pretty good orator and did "OK" on few domestic things. As for inviting those countries into NATO, what we're we supposed to do? If they wanted in, it seems reasonable that it was because they didn't want to be under Russia's umbrella and feared that the day would come again when Russian tanks would be rolling through their streets. Russia has and probably always will be a country intent on dominating its neighbors; it's been that way since the Kievan Rus.
I was suggesting Obama would have let Putin take over all those countries, only imposing sanctions in response. If Russia wanted to, it would have done so. As for NATO, invite Russia into it. Or honor Russia's wishes when it comes to which of its former bloc should be allowed into NATO. Like we do with the one China policy.
I don't think Putin's ambitions have been sated. Not for a second. I suspect he's waiting to see what happens in France, and if Le Pen gets elected and starts making noises about pulling out of the EU, leaving Germany isolated, and the NATO alliance even more unlikely to respond to Russian aggression. Secondly, what would be the point of inviting Russia into NATO? they are the reason NATO was formed. As for honoring their wishes, maybe that was the right move right after the Easter Bloc fell, but 20+ years later, there's no putting the genie back in the bottle.
As far as I'm concerned...Europes border tensions with Russia have been accumulative since WWII ended...NATO was initially a response to this...why is it always the responsibility of the US to police the Balkans? We just moved troops to the border of Poland under Trumps watch. We are a MEMBER of NATO...not it's overlord....NATO needs to address Russian imperialism on the homefront...the US should play a role but not shoulder the entire burdon every damned time. I don't even want any of our troops stationed in Europe period....blaming Obama but letting all the Euro union NATO member countries leaders out of the picture isn't fair. The Ukraine needs to solidify it's alliances in the region as well. If Mexico invades Guatemala, we don't expect China to come to the rescue.
you are correct...goes back much further..good catch....I guess I was thinking more of US involvement in Europe and Eurasia...hell even the countries have changed over the centuries..
Good Lord! Why the hell do the Democrats, Rhinos and fakenews want to restart the cold war? Are all these hawks too young and missed the action when it was the dominate issue of the day? What the hell of significance happened? The previous Democrat in charge was hitting the toy reset button! The world is great, no worry, we hit the reset! WTF? uh, MarAzul! They lost an election! They need an issue to rally around!
Suppose it was Iran that fucked with our election in cahoots with Trump. Would that be better for you? barfo
They don't....cold war door swings both ways Marz....Putin is holding it open...is it fake news that we have moved thousands of soldiers to the border of Poland under the CURRENT administration or that Iran is now free to build all the nukes it wants to? You can observe the current geopolitical climate from viewpoints that are pretty far away from even the political systems here stateside....I read the BBC and Taiwan news probably more often than any major US outlet, although I read plenty of articles here as well.....if you buy into Trump's media conspiracy fears...you really shut off the associated press feed. Choices..plenty of people are concerned about our foreign policy and Russia's without being a member of the Democratic party and whatever African endangered species you were talking about....I've yet to hear anyone in my neck of the woods ever talk about wanting to start a cold war with Russia.
